New Internationalist articles from September 2004

New Internationalist archives from September 2004

From this month's editor.(Editorial)
September 1, 2004... No doubt about it. China gets bad press. Mostly, it's about the Chinese Communist Party's appalling human rights record. But during my first visit to China, as I read the China Daily over a breakfast bowl of steaming dumplings (Beijing produces...

Tomorrow's codswallop.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
September 1, 2004... Hooked on tobacco (NI 369) bored me stiff. I have never smoked but I defend the right of everybody to do so. No-one has ever been forced to smoke by a pistol to their necks. If anything tempts me to start even now (at the age of 80) it is...

Whys and wherefores.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
September 1, 2004... In an otherwise comprehensive survey of tobacco issues, your writers fail, in my view, to ask or address the most important question: why? Why do a third of all adults smoke; why are addictions so agonizingly difficult to shake off; and what...

Taking charge of our lives.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
September 1, 2004... I agree with John Schumaker (Essay, NI 369) that, as the motive force for organizing society, greed is socially malign and altruism is impractical [Schumaker was quoting others on this latter position, not arguing it himself--Ed]. But...

Co-op success.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
September 1, 2004... Re The return of the co-op (NI 368): One of the world's most successful and extensive experiments with co-ops is in the province of Emilia Romagna in Italy. The Communist Party has been in office in the province since the Second World War....

Ethical rating.(Letters)(Brief Article)(Letter to the Editor)
September 1, 2004... Co-ops are no guarantee to safeguarding workers' rights, members' equality or good corporate practice in general. Like any other company, government or citizen nowadays, we are increasingly being strangled by global corporate conglomerates. In...

Pros and cons.(Letters)(Brief Article)(Letter to the Editor)
September 1, 2004... In response to Greg Andresen's letter (NI 368) regarding the Equality issue (NI 364), I agree that women in Australia generally receive 'equal pay for equal work'. But it must still be of some concern that women may not always have had the same...

Stereotypes.(Letters)(Brief Article)(Letter to the Editor)
September 1, 2004... Reem Haddad writes that Arabs and Muslims are often negatively portrayed in Hollywood films ('Hook noses and harems', Letter from Lebanon, NI 366). Such stereotypes are usually based in fear. The fear of the Native American produced...

Overdue debate.(Letters)(Brief Article)(Letter to the Editor)
September 1, 2004... The debate on Trotskyism is well overdue. Accusing the NI of McCarthyism in starting such a debate ignores the difference between the apparatus of the state being used to stamp out dissidents and criticism of a particular political theory in a...

Bones and myths: Reem Haddad explains how a quiet ceremony brings into focus the fantastic life of a woman who both enjoyed and disregarded privilege.(Letters from Lebanon)(Lady Hester Stanhope)(Biography)
September 1, 2004... I was surprised to hear that the British Embassy in Lebanon was going to scatter the ashes of Lady Hester Stanhope 165 years after her death. I'd always known of her, but she seemed more a mythical figure than a real person. The site was...

Highlighting the work of photographers from the Majority World.(Southern Exposure)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2004... THIS picture is part of my self-initiated project SA Youth ID--Kwaito Culture, a personal and reflective body of work about the changes in the lives of South Africans in the new democratic country. The word Kwaito is derived from the Afrikaans...

The body as weapon.(Urvashi Butalia's View from the South)(Manipuri women protest against the rape and murder of a young woman by the army)
September 1, 2004... IT'S an unusual thing in India to see a group of naked women walking down a public road holding banners inviting rape. Yet that's exactly what happened in the northeastern state of Manipur recently. In a fury of anger at the rape and murder of...

Genetic giant swats seed-saving farmer: Monsanto notches up legal victory in Canada.(Patents on Life)
September 1, 2004... PERCY Schmeiser's long legal battle has reached an end. The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled, in a tight 5-4 decision, that the farmer was guilty of violating the agri-business giant Monsanto's patent on a gene for resistance to glyphosate--in...

AIDS uncovered.(Currents)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2004... Around 5 million out of 45 million South Africans are infected with HIV, and the number is increasing. Yet the issue is slipping from local headlines, according to a report by Media Tenor, a Pretoria-based institute. During 2004 the coverage...

Code of misconduct.(Currents)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2004... There has been a dramatic deterioration in the situation at the Codevi free trade zone in northeast Haiti. In early June the army of the neighbouring Dominican Republic was called in to expel workers from the zone. A full one-day strike took...

Kentucky Fried Cruelty.(Currents)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2004... The Dalai Lama has written to Yum! Restaurants International, parent company of Kentucky Fried Chicken, asking it to abandon plans to expand KFC restaurants into Tibet. There are already over 1,000 KFC locations in China--more than in any...

Time for Tobin.(Currents)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2004... On 1 July the Belgian Parliament passed a Currency Transaction Tax into law. This is a version of the so-called 'Tobin Tax' designed to quell currency speculation and increase funding for international development. The Belgian Parliament has...

Ugly elections: media headlines are not all that's missing from the 'critical mass' of democracy in Afghanistan.(War on Terror)
September 1, 2004... WHILE media attention has been focused on the US forces in Iraq, Afghanistan--where the US still has some 20,000 troops--has been pushed far into the background. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] That was made painfully clear when President Hamid...

Savannah pigeons.(Currents)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2004... The first day the Group of Eight (G8) world leaders gathered for their June summit in Sea Island, Georgia, three protesters walked down the streets of nearby Savannah carrying a sign that read: 'Say no to pigeons!' 'Pigeons have more...

Peaceful trade.(Currents)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2004... According to a recent survey, in 2003 the most successful fair-trade product in Italy was the banana. Seven million Italians bought at least one fair-trade product, compared with 3.7 million in 2002, while 12 million knew what fair trade was,...

The language of international politics ...(Currents)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2004... Word power No. 1 amBush n. pre-emptive strike. v. to strike pre-emptively. Bush-fire n. fire that, once started, rages out of control. diplomacy n. management of international relations; skill in negotiation. (Amer. Eng.) shooting...

Speechmarks.(Currents)(Brief Article)(Illustration)(Reprint)
September 1, 2004... 'The protesters are right that the most pressing moral, political and economic issue of our time is third-world poverty. And they are right that the tide of globalization, powerful as the engines driving it may be, can be turned back. The...

Fresh fears in Congo: region seeks to avoid rerun of Africa's worst war.(Central Africa)
September 1, 2004... A substantial build-up of troops along the border of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) with Rwanda has sparked fears of renewed conflict in central Africa. By the end of June about 10,000 troops had been flown to eastern DRC after rebels...

Fish & spy chips.(True Tales of a Mixed Up World)
September 1, 2004... What do Wal-Mart stores, salmon stocks in North America, the US armed forces, Italian hospital patients, the Attorney General of Mexico and Japanese schoolchildren all have in common? They're all using special microchips which carry and...

'Let us speak!' Social debate is opening up China ... but the Communist Party still dictates. Chris Richards tracks the boundaries of the new political space.(Keynote)(Cover Story)
September 1, 2004... YOU could not help but notice it. A huge red banner--always popular in Beijing--strung high over the entrance of Renmin University, welcoming NGOs to a meeting about the environment. Inside more than 200 people from 150 organizations from all...

Boxed in: entries from the diary of a Beijing television addict.
September 1, 2004... Saturday night -- 22 May 2004 Switched-on sales The premiere of Lycra My Show. Contestants warbling away for the million renminbi ($120,000) prize... all togged out in sporty stretchy lycra. You've got to hand it to the producers:...

The big tree catches wind: China's voice now rises from the international stage. Nicola Bullard translates its schizophrenic message.(International Politics)
September 1, 2004... IN scenes reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution--or a motivation session for sales reps--thousands of young Beijingers wearing matching sky blue tracksuits sit in row after orderly row repeating with frightening enthusiasm the words of their...

A single spark starts a prairie fire: buckling under taxes and corruption, Chinese farmers are fighting back. Yu Jianrong argues that, to calm the countryside, rural people must be given a formal voice.(Rural Resistance)
September 1, 2004... WHEN a 'task force' of over 30 police officers, tax officials and township cadres arrived in Luhuatan Township to arrest Mao Mingda for 'organzing mass refusals to pay slaughter tax', they soon found themselves surrounded by a crowd of local...

A look at the sky from the bottom of the well: minorities in China whose mouths are being closed.(Falun Dafa)
September 1, 2004... Practitioners of FALUN DAFA (also known as Falun Gong) Falun Dafa is a practice combining slow, gentle body movements and meditation with the study of the universal principles of truthfulness, benevolence and tolerance. On 25...

When the tide goes out, the rocks are revealed: media barons claim that the foreign press can help bring democracy to China. Yuezhi Zhao tracks the paper tigers lurking in their rhetoric.(Globalization)(includes related article: Made in China)
September 1, 2004... As I flicked through my local paper--The Vancouver Sun--on an October morning in 2002, a headline jumped out to grab my attention. 'Playboy's Interest in China Rises', it said. Is this the type of press freedom that the media thinks will help...

A short history of free speech in China.
September 1, 2004... 200 BC The legacy of Confucius From 200 BC to the beginning of the 20th century, Chinese statecraft was based on the ideas of Confucius, a political thinker who had lived in the 5th century BC. Confucian thinking stressed ethics. It...

Where the broom does not reach, the dust will not vanish: to whose voices is the Chinese Communist Party listening--the capitalists' or the workers'? Chris Richards tunes in.(Labour Politics)
September 1, 2004... SHE is only 36 years old. Yet when you look at her, you know that every part of her is wearing out. Her whole body sags. Sometimes she works all day and through the night into the early hours of the morning. After all, there are many costs...

Let a hundred flowers bloom! Brave voices that are bringing change.
September 1, 2004... Creator of the right environment As the founder of China's first environmental NGO--Friends of Nature (FON)--Liang Congjie's work has opened up a political space for activists to campaign in without ending up in jail. FON has concentrated...

Worldbeaters ... taking aim at the rich and powerful.(Islam Karimov)(Biography)
September 1, 2004... UZBEKISTAN'S President, Islam Karimov, has a well-deserved reputation as one of the former Soviet Union's most brutal dictators. What is less appreciated, however, is his role as a master political ironist. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Born...

Fahrenheit 9/11.(Film)(Movie Review)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2004... Fahrenheit 9/11 directed by Michael Moore Moore wants to stop George W Bush's re-election. And who would vote for the stupid, sneaky, sneering, swaggering adolescent we see in this film? Moore's easy style always allows people to be...

Ae Fond Kiss.(Film)(Movie Review)
September 1, 2004... Ae Fond Kiss directed by Ken Loach [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Ken Loach is a great educator and provoker of debate. For nearly 40 years he's made films about people in often desperate personal...

Living Rights: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Stories and Poems.(Books)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
September 1, 2004... Living Rights The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Stories and Poems Volume 1, Articles 1-10 edited by Marisa Antonaya (Flame Books, ISBN 0 9545945 3 3) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] This anthology, as the title...

Benares and In Babylon.(Books)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
September 1, 2004... Benares and In Babylon by Barlen Pyamootoo (Canongate, ISBN 1 84195 337 7) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The two small novellas that comprise this book can both be described as road stories in which little happens but much is suggested....

Out of the Reeds.(Music)(Sound Recording Review)
September 1, 2004... Out of the Reeds by Pharaoh's Daughter (Tzadik TZ7187 CD) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Such is the frenetic output of Tzadik, the label for 'radical Jewish culture' set up by avant-gardist John Zorn, that it's always rewarding to see...

The Weeping Meadow.(Music)(Sound Recording Review)
September 1, 2004... The Weeping Meadow by Eleni Karaindrou (ECM 981 3327 CD) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Eleni Karaindrou introduces her theme within the first bars of The Weeping Meadow. We hear it on an accordion; it's taken up by a string ensemble, a...

The NI prize crossword.
September 1, 2004... Win a copy of the latest World Guide reference book... All correct solutions received by the 25th of the cover month will be put into a draw--though only the winner will be notified. Post your entry to NI Crossword, 55 Rectory Road, Oxford,...

Big bad world.
September 1, 2004... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Interview with Marie Hilao-Enriquez.(Making Waves)(Interview)
September 1, 2004... WHEN I ring her office, Marie Hilao-Enriquez is following political prisoners. She has always done so, since she was a political prisoner in a Philippines jail herself. Now, in June 2004, she is carefully and meticulously tracking each of the...

The onion fields: playwright and actor Kwame Kwei-Armah went to Senegal to see for himself how international trade affects everyday life ...(Essay)
September 1, 2004... On the long, straight road between St Louis and Podor in northern Senegal I met Fatimata, and she prayed for me. She was crouched in an onion field with her baby on her back. It was the hot, dry season. I was on my way to a small town...

Philippines.(Country Profile)
September 1, 2004... THE route from Manila's international airport to the city centre is lined with expensive condominiums and teeming shanty towns. Your car may just as easily pull up beside a well-waxed, brand new four-wheel-drive vehicle as an undernourished...

Gifts & publications catalogue 2004/05 from the New Internationalist.
September 1, 2004... Thank you... ... for taking the time to browse the New Internationalist's latest catalogue. We've enjoyed pulling together a great selection of ethical gifts and books for you--items that support the values of the NI. As far as...